Audience Research for Music Magazine

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JHQPXKN

Favourite Music Genres

When asked “what type of music do you like?” the overall response shows that rock music is the most popular with genres like pop, club and dance being at the bottom. This is reflected in people’s favourite bands where bands like ‘Billy Talent’ and ‘Paramore’ were both mentioned three times. This is quite a large number for the amount of bands people listen to.

What type of music do you like?

29%

8%

17%

17%

8%

8%

13%

Rock

Pop

Indie

Metal

Club

Dance

Other:

Obtaining Music

When asked “do you download music or buy CDs?”, most people answered “both” but with a choice between the two CDs being more popular. However, a large amount of people admitted to illegally downloading music.

Obviously, this shows that people love free music suggesting that they may buy a magazine if it offered a free CD or download. I think a download would be more popular because it doesn’t take up any space and can easily be transferred to an mp3 player. Offering a choice of one song from a list may attract readers too.

Do you download music or buy CDs?

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Download CDs Both

Series1

Do you illegally download music?

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Yes No

Series1

I think the wide range of amount of money spent on music, shown here, and the large number of people who illegally download music are related. People are still happy to spend money on music, with an average of around £60 a year, which is about 4 to 6 CDs a year, but get a large amount of their music through file sharing. This could mean that people like to have the CDs but, of course, free music is better. This further supports the idea of having free music on the magazine.

Following MusicI have found from this question that a lot of people do not follow their favourite bands much on the internet. A few use official sites and social networking but overall it’s not very popular. Therefore I don’tthink they are very important other than a little bit of advertising. For example, www.myspace.com music spacescan have music uploads on it so people can listen to samples.

What websites do you follow your favourite bands on?

0%0%0%0%0%0%

0%0%0%0%0%0%

0%0%

25%

13%

25%

37%Official Sites

Music Sites

Magazine Sites

Social Networking Sites

Amateur Fan Sites

I don't

Although most people don’t follow their favourite bands on the internet more of the audience prefer to watch music on the internet rather than on TV. Incorporating this into a magazine could possibly make it more popular such as advertising using ‘youtube’ links.

Overall, my poll shows that ‘Kerrang’ is the most popular magazine with more than half choosing it as their favourite music magazine. Coupled with the results of what people look for in a music magazine I have found that ‘Kerrang’ provide the more popular things like interviews with bands, reviews, gig listings and free posters and CDs.

In relation to the music magazine I will be making I will:

• My music magazine will follow the rock music genre. Rock music is very popular and something I’m very interested in as well.

• On the front cover I will advertise free posters and a free music download. Buyers love free stuff, especially free music, and I will

take advantage of that.

• People like accessing music on the internet, although they don’t necessarily follow their favourite bands on specified sites. Youtube

is popular so incorporating links into the magazine for quick, instant access to music videos to advertise news sounds will be useful.

• Buyers like exclusive interviews and local gig listings which I too will incorporate into my magazine.

• Finally, ‘Kerrang’ is a very popular rock magazine which has most of the above in its content. I will use it as a basis for my magazine to

work on.